" Yesterday at 10:00 am I left America for a month. Now, at 6:00 am an entire day later, I have landed in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is here that my cousin and I will begin the first leg of our review tour. From what I've seen so far, Lausanne seems a lot larger than it actually is. It is the town that is smack dab in the middle of everything. Just train rides away are the better known towns of Zurich, Bern, and Geneva. It almost seems like a port, and all the people you see here, speaking in so many different languages, only seem to be here for the day. I asked my cousin about all this, considering that trains aren't really a big thing in America, and we don't travel from place to place with the ease and comfort that these people seem to. He told me this: "In a strange way, you are sort of right. Lausanne is somewhat of a port town. Many people come here only as a means to reach another place. It's even here in the advertising if you look around." He proceeds to point out a simple poster (one he designed, as I later found out) on the window of a coffee shop we are walking past (see featured image). The poster is actually advertising another town! Here in downtown Lausanne, we find an image encouraging people to leave. How strange! In America, the usual goal is to market something you can profit from. Even more strange, the words on the poster are in English. Always inquisitive, I asked about this as well. Since English is definitely not a common language here, I wonder what his motive is for using English. He responded: "In advertising, it's all about determining who you are marketing to. Who do you want to buy your product? Who is likely to? You see, in a port town like this, the advertising has the greatest chance of success if it features other places. Places with more to offer. Considering that the people who pass through here are often not from these parts, and may not be familiar with the opportunities in areas near here, the designer must change the usual strategy." And suddenly it clicks. I think I've managed to grasp the first important concept of advertising. More on this later."
Basically, the lesson I learned in Lausanne is really simple: Always know your target audience. Who are you marketing to? In Lausanne's case, being a town with no real marvel of its own, it makes money by advertising the spectacles of other nearby cities and towns. Zurich, the town featured in the advertisement above, is well known for its scenic beauty, and this is illustrated in the photo itself. By marketing Zurich's best asset, its scenery, the poster draws the many travelers in Lausanne to consider seeing it for themselves. But the big question still remains: Why English? The answer is simpler than you think. Being a kind of tourist hub, Lausanne hosts people from all over the world. And what language is becoming a kind of global standard? English. That's one idea, to use a language that everyone may not speak fluently, but everyone knows a little of. The second idea is that many of the tourists in Lausanne speak English themselves, because they come from somewhere where English is the native language. It can be assumed that these people also have the money to travel to Lausanne, which if you are coming from the US, can be a spendy trip. By using English to market Zurich, the financially stable tourists of Lausanne are drawn to a place that they might not have heard of otherwise. They are the target audience, and this advertisement hits them straight through the heart.
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